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New DNS Agreement Announcement
gumbo writes "The Commerce Department, ICANN, and NSI have announced their
domain name agreements. " Well, of course, it's written in PR-ese, but AFAIK, it looks as if said parties have resolved their differences, and perhaps will start to some progress take place on the DNS front. Given the recent...disagreements and legal disputes this is a fairly sizeable shift.Interesting note - check out the (re)-opening of WHOIS.
Depends on how you look at it. Which two parties are you worried about here? If it's NSI and some other registry - indeed, any two registries, then the group with the power to enforce its rulings is undoubtedly the group that allocated registry status in the first place - IANA or, these days, its successor.
If NSI (or anyone else) is arguing with the very people who ostensibly hold that authority, and is thus challenging that authority, well that's ugly, and doesn't have a simple answer.
Nay, nay and thrice nay. There remains one central database and, just like all the other zones in the world, one primary root server. Type dig . soa on a UNIX machine and you'll see from the SOA that the primary name server is A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, run by - surprise - NSI.
The multiple root servers referred to in the document are, by my understanding, the ordinary secondary name servers for the root domain. DNS is neat like that, it allows you to spread the load for efficient bandwidth use, or CPU use, or reliability, or all three.
Same for the .COM, .NET and .ORG servers. Every domain registered in these TLDs must go through the operators of A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. This is what the $9 charge is for. It is rather unfortunate that the operators of the primary server are themselves registering .COM domains, but there weren't no easy way out of that one, 'cos NSI was never gonna give up all its hard work (and revenue stream) that easily.
Dave
[My opinions, not necessarily those of my employer]
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I'm confused by this section in particular:
3.A.i) NSI agrees that it will operate the registry for the Registry TLDs in accordance with this Agreement;
WHY keep NSI as the Registry? It's obviouse that they only want to attempt to find loopholes in the future to make money off of what they consider to me 'Proprietary data'. Granted, this section:
10. Rights in Data. Except as permitted by the Registrar License and Agreement, NSI shall not be entitled to claim any intellectual property rights in data in the registry supplied by or through registrars other than NSI. In the event that Registry Data is released from escrow under Section 7 or transferred to a Successor Registry under Section 22(D), any rights held by NSI as registry in the data shall automatically be licensed on a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, paid-up basis to the recipient of the data.
KINDA deals with the issue.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
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However in the fact sheet, we find the following:
(SNIP!)
WHOIS Data
All accredited registrars would be obligated to provide query-based access to registration data and would be barred from placing conditions upon any legal use of that data, except to prohibit use of the data to enable the transmission of mass unsolicited commercial solicitations via e-mail (spam) and to enable high-speed processes for applying for registrations.
(SNIP!)
So, it is perfectly legal to use WHOIS information for any use, except for registrations and SPAM. Take THAT, NSI!
However, this is immediatly followed by:
(SNIP!)
All accredited registrars also would be required to provide third-party bulk access to registration data (subject to the restrictions discussed above) for an annual fee that may not exceed $10,000. This obligation would remain in effect until it is replaced by a different policy adopted by ICANN or a finding by the Department of Commerce that no individual or entity is able to exercise market power with respect to data used for development of third-party value added products and services.
(SNIP!)
Spam(ers) suck(s)....
Second problem - you're maintaining multiple independent databases. Anybody who's used SQL for more than 10 minutes knows that this is a HUGE data integrity issue. Widget Enterprises decides to register widget.com, so they call up NSI and get the order put in. Meantime Funky Foobar registers widget.com with Fabulous Registration Services. Who wins? There's no way to guarantee this situation won't occur under this system - and even if there was - these organizations have no incentives to share their customers "with the enemy" to prevent it!
I find myself arguing against my better judgement on this one, but I can't see how the current system can support multiple root servers - they'll be constantly out of sync with the others! The solution is, of course, to have only one entity in charge of the database, or divide it up in an organized fashion (Internic gets registrations A-D, Frank Foobar gets E-M, etc).
However, one thing I think we can universally agree on here is that Internic should not be this entity! They're a bloated, insensitive, beaurocratic, and downright stubborn organization. Completely the opposite of what we need to make the root servers function reliably. I wish we could just hold an election and eject them from the DNS Whitehouse by popular vote. :\
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....I think it's really time for NSI to dump their database and adopt the RIPE whois database format.... it's SO much neater.... and free, too.... :)